In 1989 my mother died of Breast Cancer after having a mastectomy, a few rounds of Chemotherapy and Radiation. After cans of ensure and bowls of Jell-O. After losing her hair, she lost her life.
So reading Bon’s post about whymommy, and her encouragement to get out and Run for the Cure should get me ramped up, shouldn’t it? But it doesn’t. Nothing does. In fact, every year that those pink ribbons fly everywhere, my throat constricts and I am forced to face the specter of my loss over and over again, forced to accept that while many women live, my mother didn’t. I develop a sort of tantrum like foot stomping refusal to support “the cause”, and I can hardly isolate the reason why, or rather, I can hardly isolate the rational reason for it.
I should be happy to get out and raise some money for cancer research! I should be doing what I can to help prevent this rotten fucking disease from touching another mother or daughter. I should be fighting where my mother can’t. But I cannot. My loneliness as a woman, as a mother, a daughter is only exacerbated by that crowd of well meaning women, running as one, arms together, minds in sync. I am not one of them. I never will be.
Their togetherness serves to remind me that I have been left behind, by my mother, by my aunts, by her girlfriends. I have felt betrayed by women, by cancer, by all the things I could neither fix nor control. Those little pink ribbons only serve to remind me of what I have lost, to remind me of the aching void inside my chest that I cannot heal, remind me of the fear I hold for my own daughters. It would make sense then that I would be some kind of warrior for the cause I imagine. But I just can’t.
I cannot watch daughters with their mothers who survived anymore than I can watch others who share my brand of pain. It’s too much for me. It overwhelms me. And I feel such guilt for it, guilt at the questions behind the eyes of those who know my mother had breast cancer, guilt at the knowledge that her suffering should mean something more for me.
I’m sorry. To my mother, to the whymommy’s out there-I can’t handle it. That soft pink gathering is not for me.
you don’t need to say you’re sorry. i do, for not thinking about how that “join me” might hurt, touch a raw spot for someone else, someone who feels betrayed by the hope that the run is meant to stand for. i think you know i meant no harm, but i am still sorry.
i know a little, i think, of what you mean about not being able to watch daughters with their mothers who survived. i struggle with a dead, vast bleakness everytime i come across a perky story of preemies who did wonderfully! oh yay! god forgive me, i feel guilt for that, for my bitter, jealous hatred of people who think they’ve been through hell but – to me – live in a candyland of happy. but i cannot help it. the wound is there. and it is a button that the world around me pushes, just as your pink button must be pushed all the time.
i’m sorry it was me this time. but more, i’m just sorry about your mom, Thor. and about the little girl that was you, who got as brutally scarred by cancer as any mastectomy patient.
would you be mad if i said i’ll have you in my mind during the run, too? ’cause i will. but i can keep it under my hat if saying anything leaves you too exposed.
Bon, it’s not you. This is something that has bothered me for awhile-they do a HUGE thing here at work for it, and every year it eats at me, because I feel like such an ass.
Your post helped me figure out WHY I feel this way.
So thank you.
Is this your dragon perhaps?
My dragon?
The dragon represents the gate keeper of that place we fear to go.
It’s okay. You don’t have to be all pink about it. I hear you, and I am so so sorry for your pain. I wish I could take it away from you, even though we’ve never met. It must have been awful to lose your mom.
Breast cancer isn’t a happy pretty thing regardless of outcome, I think. (One look at my right side would certainly disabuse anyone of that notion!)
Wish I could lean over and hug you now, and help to moderate the pain.
whymommy-honey, my pain is mostly settled, buried in my chest under the detries of years-you’re living it! Don’t tell me you’re sorry, please! I know what you’re about to go through, and I wouldn’t wish it on ANYONE.
I just wish I could find a way to help make it all better. I wish I could make it make sense.
Be strong for your boys-stronger than you’ve ever been.
And if you lose your hair, and get a wig that looks like your hair, don’t just whip it off without warning. My mother did that and it freaked me out.
I totally feel you. Your story sounds all too familiar to me. It runs along the same lines as the idea of “fighing it” and winning the battle . . . are those whom we’ve lost, not fighters as well? Are they, by way of omission “losers” because the bastard called cancer eveloped them?? Yes, I have done a walk and plan to do more but as I do, I think of the quote endquote w i n n e r s and I’m still left wondering what to make of this battle called life.